Butterfly
by Shesbeenlying
Summary: At twenty two, I was what I would like to think of myself as a fullfledged adult now. Long gone were the divafits, and angsty days of my teenage rebellion.  All there were now where the memories, like the hotel rooms I had trashed in frustration.
1. How To Disappear Completely

**Butterfly**

Summary: Four years into the future Jude has become adrift from the girl she was at 18, the music industry and Tommy. Two years since they last saw each other Tommy and Jude are forced to re-unite and confront the demons they still carry at the unexpected death of a friend.

Rating: T, everything's peachy and clean but don't expect it to stay that way!

_"That there, That's not me I go where I please, I walk through walls, I float down the Liffey, I'm not here this isn't happening."-Radiohead  
_

* * *

It was one of those days you don't really remember. Honestly. It was a Wednesday. Sandwiched in between producing a young up and coming folkie named Deliah Samson (to which I found incredibly ironic), and having lunch with Sadie. Late afternoon came, and so did rain. I was kind of irritated by the time I slipped my key into the lock pushing open the door to the penthouse of the hotel I was living in. My jeans had been dragging in the acidy puddles building up, rushing into the sewers, and taking any other kind of sin the city had seen that day down into the gutters. Now my jeans were wet, and my feet were cold. I shook off my coat and flipped on some lights to give some kind of light to the place. The modern furniture, designed by some famous Swedish architect, seemed especially cold in the grey of the rain. Walking barefoot through the eight rooms that took up most of the top level, I came to my favorite place in the entire spread. The glass panels overlooking the city still got to me every time. It was like I had found a place where nobody could see me, but where all of New York was in the palm of my hand. On the fifty second story here I was again, overlooking the city that had provided me an escape from everything I had gotten away from. The afternoon rain kept a steady beat, beating against the massive panels..

I pressed my head against it leafing through mail for any kind of neglected bills. I knew Ben would be home soon, coming in to make this day all better, with a handful bizarre intricate stories about Tokyo where he had been staying the last week doing press junkets for his band's latest album. The thought alone made me smile. I never was one to warm up to the penthouse lifestyle filled with the un-homey, and unnecessary additions like 1,000 threat count Egyptian sheets and blob-furniture. It used to be hand me a loft to crash in, or naturally my own bed, and I'd be better than okay. But Ben loved it. He was new to all of this, and after all I had met him at the end of his struggle. He had been clawing at the music industry since adolescence, growing up in San Diego playing in string after string of garage bands. I had met him two years ago. It was at the end of one of my...spells, and we'd connected. Ben and I were more alike than anyone I'd experienced in awhile. But unlike me the world had not watched him grow up.

At twenty-two, I was what I would like to think of myself as a full-fledged adult now. Long gone were the diva-fits, and angsty days of my teenage rebellion. All there were now where the memories, like the hotel rooms I had trashed in frustration. Those too had been re-vamped, re-made, re-packaged over and over again for strangers to judge which way they liked it best. I certainly wasn't _that_ Jude Harrison anymore, the naïve girl pounding out a rock ballad on her guitar carrying a badge of independence with L'Oreal #437 Hair-Dye "She's on Fire." I wasn't the girl turned musician next door anymore because I had lived too long in the spotlight to retain that kind of innocent, and last but not least I wasn't the girl spiraling downward over and over again privately and then publicly over Little Tommy Q.

The last one was the hardest layer to shed.

I walked into the kitchen pouring myself a glass of wine and pressing my fingers across my temples. My blackberry was ringing and I figured it was Ben, surprising me, telling me he was outside. I grabbed it, holding it close to my face.

"Hello?" I said, kind of out of breath from running from kitchen to living room.

"Jude?" The voice on the other end was the one person I could place anywhere.

"It's Tommy. I don't know how else to tell you this, but…Jamie…Jamie's dead."


	2. Lizzy

"Sign me up I volunteered, votes are in for lifeguard of the year."-Ben Kweller

* * *

Somehow when like that hits you your first instinct is no matter how much baggage you have been building up is to, no matter how many strings you have tying you down, is to go home.

"Where are you?" I asked him. Sliding down onto the kitchen floor. I stayed there, digging my nails into the hard wood for some kind of support.

"L.A."

He replied after a pause, and I could tell how shook up he was in his voice. Even after all the time and 3,000 miles we had separating us, I could tell. I felt something I thought I had buried long ago claw through my stomach. Jamie. My Jamie. The boy I had lived next door to all my life who had been the only sense of normalcy in my life for so long. The boy who loved me no matter how many times I let him down, unconditionally. The one who had cleaned up all my messes, and now he was gone with just one phone call.

"Stay there." I said, "Give me a couple hours, I'll be there."

Because we had an unspoken agreement when disaster struck this was the only way I could think of to deal with it.

I knew it was taking everything he had not to say "No, that's okay." But Tommy Quincy did something that surprised me. It took a few seconds, and finally he said one word, showing some kind of vulnerability I'd seen only a few times before.

"Okay." He said quietly clearing his throat, "Okay." He said a little louder.

"And Jude?"

"Yeah?" I said still holding my breath, the only thing I could hear was the steady beat of the rain. The lights were off in the kitchen and I hadn't even noticed until now.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Me too." I said hanging up.

Suddenly letting breathing for the first time in what seemed like hours. The penthouse was empty and quiet, and now it seemed like Antarctica, the loneliest place in the world. Catching a glimpse of myself in the glare of the refrigerator I stared back blankily.

That's when I started crying, then sobbing, suddenly I couldn't breathe. I was in the loneliest place in the world because suddenly my only real friend was gone. The person I had dragged down along with me had lost the battle I had been fighting for years. I was that girl again, trashing my own kitchen grabbing the vase of flowers on the island and throwing it against the refrigerator. I didn't want to be alone with her anymore; I didn't want to be alone with myself. I was sitting in a pile of broken glass with my hands in my face when I heard Ben.

"Jude???" He called out, walking into the kitchen I looked up at him.

"Oh my god, Jude are you alright?" Ben knew about this side of me to some extent, but he hadn't seen the worst of it in the flesh.

"Jamie's dead." I managed to say, somehow, but he got the message even if I didn't actually say it that coherently. And to that he didn't say anything. He moved the piece of glass out of the way and sat with me on the kitchen floor. Taking my head into his hands and letting me cry and get my snot all over his shirt.

"I need to go." I said after awhile. Brushing the hair out of my eyes and not looking at his face.

"Go where?"

"I need to go to L.A. I need to get Tommy, and then we need to go home."

He tried not the be phased, and wiped the eye makeup that was mixed with hot salty tears away from bottom of my eyes.

"I'll go book you a flight." And I managed somehow to smile a little bit, because Ben was too good for me and we both knew it. He was too understanding, and he was here, cleaning up my mess, just like someone always had done for me. Because if it wasn't Jamie, or Sadie, it had always been someone trying to take care of me.

"Ben." I said. "I have to do this myself."

"I know." He said quietly, putting his face into my neck. "I know."

And so for the next hour I got it together and buried it deep down inside of me for now. Because truly, that was something I was getting good at. I went into zombie mode, booking a flight, put clothes in a bag and trying to focus on one thing at a time. I kissed Ben goodbye and walked out of the door, slamming it a little bit too loud behind me. Suddenly I realized it wasn't just some Wednesday in June anymore. Sandwiched in between lunch with Sadie and producing Deliah Samson, it was Wednesday June 23rd, 2011. The day my best friend died.


	3. Back in Black

Back in Black

_"I've been too long, I'm glad to be back"-ACDC_

* * *

I used to feel completely relieved when I knew Tommy Quincy was on a different continent. Knowing that different continents were about the space we needed to keep safely away from each other. It is a little funny I guess, thinking that I used to use the Atlantic Ocean as a security blanket, but then again I also used to walk around with a lot of poison still left in my veins from Tommy. We never really lost touch, if that's what you're thinking. He never disappeared from my blackberry, emails never went more than six months without finding their way to my inbox somehow. One or two sentences, usually, like: _Jude- In Cannes, the film festival was amazing. Hit up the club scene around Paris, check out Black Dollhouse, they have a sound I think you would like._

In the beginning years, there was a lot more anger. The flow of late night phone calls where I'd scream at him with a fourth of a bottle of Absolut Vodka in my system are really at such a number that I couldn't tally. Of course as time passed, my composure grew. There would be calls from him also, less frequent than the short notes. I'd answer the phone somewhere near three am usually, and I'd know it was him. I'd know it was his only way of saying sorry, although he didn't come right out and say it. He'd sound sad, and drunk and often would just say something like "….well I was just checking in." As if our relationship had never ended, and as if we hadn't not spoken on the phone in months.

I cleaned up my life, and squeezed the venom out little by little, but to be honest I don't know if Tommy knew. Sometimes it was hard to believe he even cared. Often times after caring about someone for so long, people tell you that it fades with time, I still don't know if these people are lying. It's the baggage I still carry, that I used to tie to me like a ball and chain and cry like a little kid when it dragged me down. Since I turned things around, I have tried my very best to hide it under the constant coat I've been wearing for the last two years.

Driving through Los Angeles always gives me a rush. I think it's literally designed to do that. I'd quickly rented a car, Enterprise having recognized me, they promptly had upgraded my sedan to SUV. I didn't want to admit it, but what I really would have loved was to show up at Tommy's in some Jaguar or a Porsche, but the rental company was overbooked as it was. They handed me the keys to a 2007 black Range Rover and I was off. I didn't have much stuff, in fact I only had one bag milling in the spacious back seat trunk. I'd map quested the way to Tommy's apartment, somewhere along the beaches of Santa Monica. The way people live in California always amazes me, always in traffic, always surrounded by mile long palm trees, I tried to distract myself with these things. I gripped the steering wheel and while stuck in the 40 plus car lock up I checked my face in the mirror. I looked tired from my flight, and even though I'd changed at the airport, I felt like the black tank top hung off my body awkwardly. I really needed to stop thinking about these things.

Suddenly I was about to hit something.

I braked and screamed, my breath catching up as my car idled two inches from the boy who had gotten in my path, wearing a black hoodie. It looked just like Jamie, his profile, the way he was standing, is hands in his pockets. I almost yelled at him thinking in the crazy way of thinking a person can have for a millisecond that I was so happy that this had all been a prank him and Tommy had played to get me to come to Los Angeles.

But a second passed and the kid turned around, it wasn't Jamie. He gave me a dirty look and ran across the street to the median. I ran my hands in my hair and pressed my forehead to the steering wheel. I felt like I was going to have a full down meltdown, and could hear the honking behind me. Across four lane wide "residential" street of LA I heard a familiar voice.

"Jude!" I looked up, and it was Tommy. Standing in front of a four high story apartment. Seeing someone you haven't seen in years that you used to love harder than it can possibly be good for you, I guess is supposed to shake you up. Only it had the opposite affect on me, I hadn't been able to breathe, and suddenly I was pulling over and handing my keys to the valet and unexpectedly hugging him. I had planned it all out, I was going to shake his hand, I was going to walk smoothly by and shake his hand like the adults we were and smile. Only we grabbed onto each other like teenagers.

"I'm glad you're here." He said. For now, I was too.


End file.
